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Oral presentation

The use of insecticides against mosquitoes, and drugs to treat infection, continue
to form the mainstays of malaria control programmes, but the long term success and
sustainability of these approaches is threatened by the development of insecticide
and drug resistance. New complementary approaches to control must be explored.

The development by Okumu and others [1] of a blend of synthetic chemical attractants which was capable of attracting more
Anopheles gambiae s.s. than a human, provided the key breakthrough towards creation of a mass trapping system
which could be used for malaria control. By luring Anopheles mosquitoes to traps in numbers that are high enough to suppress population size and
reduce biting intensity, a decline in malaria transmission could be realized. Here
we describe our plans for the development and testing of odour-baited traps for malaria
control in Western Kenya.

The SolarMal project aims to demonstrate proof of principle for the elimination of
malaria from Rusinga Island, Western Kenya, using the nationwide adopted strategy
of LLINs and case management, augmented by mass trapping of mosquito vectors. The
use of novel technology and scientific development underpins all areas of the project;
from the optimisation of chemical baits to attract mosquitoes, to the design of a
new mosquito trap and the installation of solar panel systems to provide power to
run the traps. Electronic tablets are used to record health and demographic surveillance
data.

The mosquito traps operate according to a counterflow mechanism previously shown to
be highly effective in collecting anopheline mosquitoes [2] and are designed to collect mosquitoes outdoors prior to house entry. Odour baits
placed within the traps mimic human odourants [3].

In a unique variation on the stepped wedge intervention strategy, which we refer to
as the hierarchical design, intervention implementation begins at one randomly selected
household and expands radially until a cluster of houses with the intervention is
created. The intervention implementation then commences in a second geographically
distinct location, then a third, fourth, fifth etc, continuing until the whole island
is covered.

Outcome measures of malaria parasite prevalence and incidence, as well as estimates
of malaria transmission intensity, will be used to assess the impact of the intervention.
We expect the results to demonstrate that the use of odour baited traps is an effective,
novel means of integrated malaria control.